Celebrate food, life and diversity. Join me in the search for the right ingredients: Food without human antibiotics, growth hormones and other harmful additives that have become commonplace in animals raised on factory farms.

Attention food shoppers

We are legions -- legions who are sorely neglected by the media, which prefer glorifying chefs. I love restaurants as much as anyone else, but feel that most are unresponsive to customers who want to know how the food they are eating was grown or raised.I hope my blog will be a valuable resource for helping you find the healthiest food in supermarkets, specialty stores and restaurants in northern New Jersey. In the past five years, I stopped eating meat, poultry, bread and pizza, and now focus on a heart-healthy diet of seafood, vegetables, fruit, whole-wheat pasta and brown rice. I'm happiest when I am eating. -- VICTOR E. SASSON

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Costco slashes price for fresh wild salmon

Hackensack's Alaska connection is Costco Wholesale.

About a week after the season's first fresh wild-salmon fillets began showing up at Costco Wholesale, the Hackensack warehouse store slashed the price to $8.99 a pound from $13.99.

On Friday, my wife picked up our second Copper River sockeye fillet, and I roasted the portions in a preheated 450-degree oven after adding just a sprinkling of salt and ground Aleppo red pepper.

The smallest portion was finished in about 7 minutes, and the larger ones in 10 minutes.

I had chopped up mint and oregano from the garden, and added extra-virgin olive oil and freshly squeezed lime juice to them, spooning some on the juicy fillet.

On Friday night, I ate wild salmon with a baked white Korean yam and a salad.

I have been eating a lot of smoked and frozen wild salmon in the last couple of weeks, so the fresh fillets are icing on the cake.

There is nothing like the color and taste of fresh wild salmon, especially when compared to artificially colored farmed salmon.

Straight out of the oven, fresh sockeye salmon is
juicy. Straight out of the fridge, above, you can taste the
heart-healthy fat in the flesh and skin. This was a light dinner.

Smoked wild Alaskan salmon in an open-face breakfast omelet.

For a break from wild salmon, we use salted Alaskan
pollock to make ackee and salt fish, and serve it with boiled green
bananas and Valentina hot sauce, below.

I just took a quick look at the Oceana study. No retailer or restaurant that mislabeled fish is identified, and none of the fish mentioned was purchased in New Jersey, where I live. Also, the study is for 2010-12.